Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Measuring Social Security’s Financial Problems

Contents:

Author Info

  • Jagadeesh Gokhale

    (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and NBER)

  • Kent Smetters

    (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

The U.S. Social Security system has helped keep many retirees out of poverty. However, according to the Social Security and Medicare Trustees, Social Security faces a future financial shortfall of $10.4 trillion in present value. This enormous imbalance has received little attention in public debates about Social Security. Instead, the media and policymakers continue to focus on the program’s trust fund and several other ad-hoc measures that create a misleading impression of the size of Social Security’s financial problem. Although the Social Security Trust Fund is not projected to be exhausted until 2042, Social Security’s $10.4 trillion present value imbalance is accruing interest and will grow by $600 billion during 2004 alone. The current cash-flow federal budget, however, is biased against reforms that would improve Social Security’s finances. As shown herein, a new federal accounting system would remove this bias.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.mrrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp093.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center in its series Working Papers with number wp093.

as in new window
Length: 26 pages
Date of creation: Jan 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp093

Contact details of provider:
Postal: P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Phone: (734) 615-0422
Fax: (734) 647-4575
Email:
Web page: http://www.mrrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/papers/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Jagadeesh Gokhale & Kent Smetters, 2003. "Fiscal and generational imbalances: new budget measures for new budget priorities," Policy Discussion Papers, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Dec.
  2. Kent Smetters, 2004. "Is the Social Security Trust Fund a Store of Value?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 176-181, May.
  3. Peter Diamond, 2004. "Social Security," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 1-24, March.
  4. Sita Nataraj & John B. Shoven, 2004. "Has the Unified Budget Undermined the Federal Government Trust Funds?," NBER Working Papers 10953, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Gary V. Engelhardt & Jonathan Gruber, 2004. "Social Security and the Evolution of Elderly Poverty," NBER Working Papers 10466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Francisco J. Gomes & Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Luis M. Viceira, 2007. "The Excess Burden of Government Indecision," NBER Working Papers 12859, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Miao, Jianjun & Wang, Neng, 2011. "Risk, uncertainty, and option exercise," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 442-461, April.
  3. Mar Devesa Carpio & José E. Devesa Carpio, 2009. "El coste y el desequilibrio financiero-actuarial de los sistemas de reparto. El caso del sistema Español," Working Papers. Serie EC 2009-09, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
  4. Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Ben Marx & Pietro Rizza, 2006. "Americans' Dependency on Social Security," NBER Working Papers 12696, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 2007. "Is the U.S. Bankrupt?," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2007-015, Boston University - Department of Economics.
  6. Andrew G. Biggs & Jeffrey R. Brown & Glenn Springstead, 2005. "Alternative Methods of Price Indexing Social Security: Implications for Benefits and System Financing," NBER Working Papers 11406, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Anjan Thakor, 2006. "Commentary on "Is the United States bankrupt? "," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jul, pages 251-258.
  8. Nippani, Srinivas & Smith, Stanley D., 2010. "The increasing default risk of US Treasury securities due to the financial crisis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2472-2480, October.
  9. Francois Gourio, 2007. "Putty-Clay Technology And Stock Market Volatility," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2007-005, Boston University - Department of Economics.
  10. Erling Holmøy, 2007. "Fiscal sustainability: Must the problem be diminished before we can see it?," Discussion Papers 499, Research Department of Statistics Norway.
  11. Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 2006. "Is the United States bankrupt?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jul, pages 235-250.
  12. William R. Emmons & Anthony Pennington-Cross, 2006. "Editor's introduction," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jul, pages 221-234.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp093

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (MRRC Administrator).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.